Claire rose and slipped quietly to her own bed. All the aching pain of her proposed future came over her with its dirty sordidness. She could never standit, she thought, and clenched her teeth. Well, it was not necessary. When Lawrence was gone, there was the lake. That would be her way out of it all. No one need ever know. The thought of death seemed very sweet to her.
Philip came in, saw Lawrence asleep, and stole across the room to peep in at her. She met his glance.
"I beg your pardon," he murmured.
"Never mind," she answered dully. "Come in if you like."
He hesitated, then stepped through, and let the curtain fall behind him.
"May I sit here?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
"Why not?" Her voice was colorless. "Only please speak softly. Don't wake Lawrence."
"He'll feel better after his sleep, I think."
"I hope so."
He sat looking down into her dark, clouded eyes. There was something so tragic, so sad, and so submissive in them that he was filled with utter tenderness.
"Claire," he whispered, "what is the matter?"
"Nothing. I'm quite well."
"You look absolutely desolate."
"I don't especially feel so."
"Are you happy?"
"I don't know."
He stooped over her, studying her face. She did not move, only her deep, dark eyes looked up coldly into his. He took the hand which she did not draw away, and whispered: "Claire, let me make you happy."
She did not answer. He bent nearer. Her eyes did not shift from his, she saw that he was going to kiss her, but she did not move. If the whole world had come crashing down upon her, she could not have made the slightest effort to escape.
He pressed his lips against hers. She did not return his kiss, but she did not protest. He slipped his arm around her waist and drew her up. Still she made no objection. He held her more closely, kissing her again and again. She remained impassive, unable to summon sufficient willpower to resist. Besides, had she not decided to be this man's wife?
He was pouring into her ears short, whispered words of endearment, giving his love free rein.
"Claire—Claire," he whispered passionately, "you do love me! Say you love me!"
"Oh, must I say that?" she asked languidly.
He laid her head back on the pillow tenderly.
"Why shouldn't you?" he demanded. "You do, or you wouldn't let me act this way. Oh, Claire, isn't that true?"
"Doesn't your own heart tell you, Philip?" She could not lie easily.
"Yes, of course. I just wanted to hear you say it, dear."
"Why?"
"Because—because it means so much to me."
"How does it mean any more than my unresisting lips?" She wanted to be fair to Philip. Would he want a wife without love?
He looked at her, puzzled by her calm question.
"Because, dear, it would mean that you put your seal on our divine betrothal."
"I gave you my lips, you held me in your arms, doesn't that mean love to you?"
"Claire, why do you talk that way?"
"Why shouldn't I? Isn't it true?"
"Yes, but you—you seem so unlike the woman you are."
"Oh, I see. But you haven't told me fully why you wanted me to say I loved you."
He stood up nervously and moved a few paces away, but the patient, self-reproachful gaze in Claire's eyes brought him back again.
"Why talk of that at all, dearest?" he whispered. "We have each other. Isn't that enough?"
"Perhaps not. You asked me to say it, you know."
"Yes, but I don't care. I won't plague you. I know you do love, me." He kissed her again and then looked at her. Her lips had been cold.
"What is the matter, Claire? Don't you love me? Is that why you wouldn't give me your word?"
It was coming at last. How could she make Philip see, and yet be fair to him, too?
"I don't know what you mean by love." Her voice was carefully toneless.
Philip's eyes lighted. "Don't you want me here beside you? Don't you warm to my kisses? Isn't there an awakened tenderness in you at my touch? Isn't there, dearest?"
Claire's hands moved nervously up and down the edge of the comforter. "If I should stay here with you, that would be the highest proof that I loved you, wouldn't it?"
"What else?" He looked at her, hope giving his face a renewed glow.
Was that all that love meant to him? "Is that what your years of thought have taught you?" she said aloud.
"Why, yes, Claire, the return of passion for passion, of warmth for warmth, of tenderness for tenderness, must be the last test, mustn't it?"
Despite her resolution her eyes narrowed ironically.
Philip started, and stared at her.
"Would you ever be jealous of my husband?" she asked, slowly.
His head dropped. "No—and yes. Of course, I wish he hadn't been your husband, but we can't help what fate has decreed." He raised his eyes, and then suddenly he smiled. "Claire, is it because of him that you are unwilling to tell me you love me?" he asked softly. "I think I can understand. You'll have to be freed from him in some way, and we must be married, of course."
"I am free from him. To him, I am dead. Isn't that enough?"
"Yes," he answered judiciously, "if your own conscience is satisfied."
She smiled a little, her eyebrows lifting in amusement. "Oh, my own conscience dictates my every act, Philip."
"I know it does," he agreed, earnestly. "But your lips were cold to my kiss." He bent over to test the truth of his remark.
"Do you forget Lawrence so easily?" Claire raised a hand over her face. "Certainly I cannot."
"I beg your pardon," Philip said, rising hastily. "Of course he is to be remembered. We will wait until we are alone to talk of our future."
"Yes," she said. "I should prefer that greatly."
He touched his lips to her forehead tenderly, then stepped silently into the room beyond.
She heard him as he moved quietly to replenish the fire, and it seemed to her that he made enough noise to echo from the mountains across the lake. She must think her situation through. She was studying the look she had read on Philip's face, and was angry with herself, yet she could not help thinking of it and its meaning. Suddenly she remembered the same expression on her husband's face, and she shuddered. She had thought it beautiful then, why not now? And why should she be so contemptuous when probably the same look had been in her own eyes when she had raged at Lawrence because he had not taken her in his arms. Philip was sitting out there beyond the curtain dreaming ecstatically of the days when they would be alone in the cabin, and she smiled ironically. After all, there was but one way out. He would find little comfort in her ghost, and her drowned body would scarcely fire him to passion.
She rose and slipped out into the room. Lawrence was still asleep. She did not even glance toward Philip because she foresaw his look of proprietorship. She went straight to Lawrence, and bending over him as if to arrange something about his blanket, she whispered softly: "Beloved, when I am alone with him, I shall be more with you."
Philip came and stood beside her, his hand resting lightly on her shoulder.
"It looks like a serious fever," he said softly.
Claire listened to Lawrence's breathing and felt his temperature. She stood up, gray with anxiety. "I'm afraid for him," she said, and there was that in her voice which Philip did not understand.
They ate their supper in silence. Claire glanced at Philip occasionally and found in his eyes the anticipated look of tender ownership. She let him slip out of her mind while she thought again of the afternoon when Lawrence had declared his creative principle. How dearly she would love to help him, to have him model his statue of her. He had said that she was savage and elemental underneath her polish. He had known, then, all the time. What a man he was! If only she knew how to find his love, to reawaken it. But no, he would never forget. Well, he would not have been able to care for her, anyway, she was so utterly sensual despite all her training in culture. He would want a more spiritual woman to fire his imagination to do great work. She tried to imagine what sort of woman would be best for his wife.
Lawrence stirred restlessly. She rose and went quickly to the bed. He was still asleep and she stood looking down at him. In her heart was a great tenderness and a great fear. What if he should die? Memories of their days in the woods swept over her in waves of love.
Abruptly she turned to Philip and said quietly: "Philip, until I am your wife you must not touch me again."
He looked up, startled, then smiled. "I understand, my dear," he said, "I will not."
She sat down at the table to wait for Lawrence's waking. It was late when he did, and immediately they realized that he was worse. Claire gave him some hot soup made from dried meal and helped Philip get him undressed and into bed.
"I'll put some blankets here and sleep on the floor beside him," Philip whispered. "I don't in the least mind, and I can help him if he wants help during the night."
"Thank you," Claire said gratefully. She felt indebted to this man for every kindness shown Lawrence.
Long before morning she was aroused by the sound of movements out there in the room.
"What is it?" she called softly.
"I am looking for something in which to heat water," came Philip's voice.
She scrambled out of bed, drew on a few clothes, and went out. Lawrence was tossing on his bed and breathing heavily. She set to work heating the water herself, and sent Philip back to his blankets. There was a pleasure in doing this nursing for Lawrence. She felt glad that hers was the chance to care for him.
"You're to have the best nursing a sick man ever got, Lawrence," she said, stooping over him tenderly.
He smiled faintly and whispered: "Good, Claire."
"You'll be well so quick you won't remember being ill."
"I know," he murmured huskily.
"What do you know?" she asked eagerly.
"I know, it's natural for you, this kindness."
"Is that all you know, Lawrence?"
"About all, Claire. About all, yet."
"Why do you say 'yet'?"
"I haven't thought it out yet."
"What, Lawrence?"
"My platform, my work-bench for the future."
She laughed, a little sadly. "You would better stop thinking about that for a day or so, wouldn't you?"
"Perhaps. I can't, though."
She drew up a chair and sat beside him. "I'm going to become a regular guard, and if you don't sleep and let thinking wait, I'll scold dreadfully."
He tossed uneasily and turned toward her, his cheeks brilliant with fever.
"I like to hear you scold, Claire," he said. "I shall go my limit."
She rubbed her cool hand across his forehead for answer.
When he at last slept, she continued to watch by his side, rocking slowly in her chair. It was peace for her to sit there and dream. There was rest from her ceaseless questionings, and it was welcome rest.
During the days that followed Claire's attitude grew into one of motherhood. She watched over Lawrence for the least thing she might do, the least promise of returning health. There were times when he raved in delirium, and she listened with a swelling heart.
One morning he began suddenly talking of himself. In broken sentences, shapelessphrases, half finished thoughts, he unfolded a strange tale. Claire was glad that Philip was away at work with his traps. She sat beside Lawrence, her hands clasped, and did not miss a word.
"You see," he began one day without preliminaries, "you see, I wasn't just given the best of chances. That was the beginning of it all. I wasn't fairly treated." She tried to comfort him into sleep, but he did not know she was talking to him and went on earnestly with his unconscious revelation.
"The whole business was a squalid sort of thing banked by mountains so grand in their rugged strength that I never got used to the dirty, dusty little half-civilized town there on the plateau. Even as a child I felt the intolerable difference between the place and its surroundings. Men ought to be better up there, but they aren't. They just magnify faults with the bigness of the hills around. Lots of it was romantic, lots of it ought never to be lost, the frank freedom, the vital living, the joy of uncertain victory over the dirt of the mines. It made men wild, wild to the last degree, that ever possible stumbling into gold, pure, glittering gold. Why, I saw it as a kid, shining like stars all over the side of the tunnel. It made even the children mad, I think. When I modeled rude little figures out of the red clay, I was always on the outlook for a possible gold-mine."
He laughed, then went on seriously. "I didn't have the chance to grow up learning things gradually. There was no dividing-line between vice and virtue, all of it spread out there, street behind street, in a glow of abandoned riot. Even virtue flashed with a loose frankness that deceived a growing boy. It was a grand drama. Fifty thousand mad men and women!"
She looked at him in amazement. This was something beyond her knowledge. What was it all that he was talking about?
"There was Josey; she didn't know. I didn't. We saw love played with in hilarious open passion. We thought it was the thing to do. Children oughtn't to see it quite that way."
Claire felt guilty, but he stopped and when he began again he was on a different line of old memories.
"Why, when I sold papers down on the main street I could see the girls of the district standing around, one block below, in their business regalia. I thought at first they were angels."
Claire sat in wonder and listened.
"The first time I ever went down there I was eight. Eight years old, and one of them called me from the open door of her house. When I stepped to the door, she was coming down a stairway, her white dress open and spread like wings at either side of her naked body. I was sure she was an angel out of my Sunday-school book. I could scarcely take the dime she gave me. I never forgot her kissing me and patting my head when I stared so at her."
Claire felt a strangely tender pity for the little chap she was seeing now in her imagination.
"And the fighting, dirty, freckled sons of those women—they kept me hard at it, keeping the money I got. After that day, I went down there often. Traded a paper with a golden-haired angel for a box of cigarettes, the first I ever owned. It was great, wonderful, to have her cigarettes. I smoked them with a sense of reverence.
"Wright and I played hooky, and the girls hid us all day in their shacks, played with us, teased us about sex, and taught us things we oughtn't to have known. Poor old Wright! They sent him to the pen for burglary after I had been gone years and was blind. I wonder if I'd have followed him. Most likely would.
"And, oh, the hills! There was old Pisga, pined to its cone point, and a race-track, with a saloon, at its foot. I ran away out there once at a big Fourth of July barbecue. It rained like the devil and I lounged in the bar with jockeys and sporting girls, listening to their ribald talk.
"I don't know—a street urchin in a camp, that was all I was. If I got licked, and I did, I was a coward for years and had to give up my pennies. I used strategy, cunning, because I was afraid to fight till I whipped Red. That made a difference. If the old fellow I liked so hadn't given Red a quarter to lick me, I'd have been a coward yet. It made me so mad I licked Red."
Lawrence laughed again merrily.
"That started me fighting, and I fought daily without provocation. Dirty, scaly fisted little rat, whose stockings sagged around his shoes, fighting for money in the saloons! The men liked me, too. All of them called me their kid. I used to stand big-eyed and watch the faro-table stacked with gold. There were days, too, when I went out alone over the hills. I was ashamed of my little figures and afraid lest the boys find my mud-pies, as Red had called a tiny dog that fell out of my pocket in a fight.
"One day in an electric storm I saw a man and his horse killed by lightning. I was awed, and electricity became my god. I worshiped it like a little heathen. I even bought penny suckers and stuck them up in the ground where the lightning played in stormy weather.
"It always seemed that the only things about the whole camp that fitted with the hills were that girl in white and an old mountaineer who fought with his fists alone against a gang of drunks. I don't know why. They just belonged."
He stopped and lay a long time in silence. Claire thought over what he had said, and her heart went out to this man as if he were still the little gamin of the hills.
"Poor little chap," she murmured aloud.
Lawrence half raised himself in bed, talking again, and she was obliged to push him back.
"It was all paradise, though, compared to that school where the Women's Club sent me. I didn't want an education. Freedom was taken from me. I was chained with discipline. I had seen too much and I told the other marveling boys. They talked, and I was punished as a degenerate little villain. I couldn't see why. That first winter was hell. They all misunderstood me, and I them. I ached for my mountains again, and when they sent me to the camp for the summer I whooped for joy.
"I must have been thirteen at that time. The men in camp paid the Widow Morgan to keep me through the summer. She had a daughter seventeen or thereabouts. Georgia had curly hair and blue eyes. She didn't pay much attention to me at first. I didn't care.
"Then one night the widow went off to a lodge-meeting and left us alone. Pearly and the gang came around and began throwing rocks at the house and demanding that Georgia let them in. I was furious, and she was nearly scared to death. She got her mother's pistol and asked me to shoot it. I took it and, opening the door, fired into the night. The gang slunk off, but Georgia was still frightened.
"We slipped out of our clothes in trembling silence and huddled together in her mother's bed. She was crying, and I felt very brave. I put my arms around her and comforted her. She became quiet by and by and slipped her arms around me. After that we found ourselves.
"She said we were in love, and I guess we were. That night was the beginning of my rebellious manhood. Her mother abused us roundly for immoral little whiffits. I was put out, and after that the county kept me. Georgia hated me, for she said I was to blame.
"I suppose that was all right, too, but it made me bitter against what seemed to me an unjust world. I went back to school, hating. I never stopped hating as long as I was there. It was misunderstanding from first to last. I never ceased rebelling against punishment for rebellion.
"It was a hopeless snarl, but it made me what I was when I entered college, distant, sullen, and ferocious. My only joy was in my work, and I spent all my spare time in the studio. Then the second summer I shot off the gunpowder, and blindness came."
Lawrence lay back silent, then began again.
"After the accident it was a thousand times worse. I thought people didn't like me because I was blind. They only pitied and misunderstood. Misunderstood—that word might be my epitaph. It could certainly be placed over my childhood's grave.
"It was in college that I started thinking. Thought out my plan of militant egoism. It seemed to succeed, but all the time I was afraid it was only pity that sold my work. You know, Claire, as you said, I've got to do it all over again. All of it, building a new platform, a new work-bench. I'vegot to allow for things. I've got to understand."
In her tension, Claire walked the floor. Would he never stop? That glimpse into his life at the widow's—who was Pearly?—and what a tough little gang he must have grown up with! Poor boy!
He did not talk much for a long time, then he kept repeating: "I must build a new work-bench, Claire. That's the thing to do."
She felt at times that she must scream at him, then she would be all motherly tenderness. "Lawrence," she would whisper, "do it, my man. You can, my laddie."
He tossed, and chided an unseen man or woman for having helped him through charity under the garb of admiration. He was misunderstanding again. He thought everything was charity, pity for his blindness, and he raved. She began to see that this sudden bitterness which poured from his lips was the outcome of years of sorrow, the product of a deep-burning fire to see the beauty his soul craved.
"Lawrence," she cried, "God knows if I could I would give you my eyes!"
She knew that he was consumed with the pain of his struggle to comprehend more beauty. Even exaggerating his hunger for sight, she wept beside him. Her whole soul yearned to help him, to give him more of the beauty which seemed the prime need of his nature.
Sometimes he prayed for it, addressing Fate, Nature, Chance, anything, everything but God.
After a silence that was beginning to frighten Claire, he began again. At first his words were indistinct, but as she leaned closer, they cleared of guttural sounds. She listened spellbound.
"You see, I hadn't done my thinking with allowance for the whole of human character, Claire. That was what was wrong with me. I'm doing that now. I'm finding myself again. It is back with the beginning of things I must start. Back with the first squirm of life in the primordial mud. It's no use trying further back than that. No use at all. Back of that lies only conjecture.
"There was existence, perhaps, inert unconscious existence waiting to become suddenly aware of itself, aware of its parts and its difference from other things. Well, existence struggling, dreaming of self-knowledge, found in a wriggling, oozing spot of protoplasm—that's the start of it all. Feeding without hunger, moving without knowledge to food, reproducing mechanically by division, living without instinct, without emotion, without death. For me, that must be the beginning.
"Whether death came, or what it was—a long period without food, perhaps—that started this stuff to changing, I do not know. Maybe it was existence following the way of greatest pressure toward selfhood. Anyway, it started and began its journey. Up and up, out of the mud and ooze, into light and dry dirt.
"The glory of light must have been a great thing then. Think of it, coming into light, out of wet, dark mud. I know what it would be better than you. Light, the first great discovery of life! It must have hastened growth—warmth, sunrays, heat, cold at night and dark again. The glory of it breaking at dawn over the squirming, groping blind existence of things!
"God said let there be light, and there was light.
"Existence demanding the thing it craved. Was that it, or existence finding light and learning to crave it? No matter—light, a thousand miracles of warmth and wonder! Growth was inevitable, Claire.
"Then the craving learned by experience broke into new form. I don't know what it was; a two-celled bug, perhaps—only that it was craving that did it. Hunger and thirst after light.
"Pain came at the very start of things. Wants unsatisfied drove with the scourge of hell, forcing eyes, ears, stomach, sex into being, and out of the squalor of it all, still goaded by incessant want, there heaved the gigantic scaly carcass of the dinosaur. Still unaware of things, but driven to move, to grow, to expand. Existence demanding more expression of its awareness of self.
"The beast didn't know what it was. He only grew and grew and grew, till he spread his ugly, yearning life over hundreds of feet of ground. Eye and ear and touch anda peace of filled belly lay basking in the light, glorying in what they found. Life was good, riotously good, finding things, finding itself out. They fought, fed, killed, bred, all in the effort of existence to know.
"What a blood-drenched chaotic struggle for self it was, Claire!
"And so, on and on and on. Touch didn't satisfy the incessant taste for more knowledge, more life. Bodies rising like hills out of the marshes couldn't give the keen joy that existence craved for itself.
"New things again: changed, altered products of the old, bearing in their frames the history, the memory of the old—it all came, and out of it at last, hunger-driven for more keen life, sprang a biped, hairy, tusked, savage, bloody, lustful, eager to live, live, live!
"He was a glorious beast. In his flattened head that held the little bloodshot eyes were memory, products of the past, things that harked back for confirmation of present things. He had instincts—that's what they are, instincts, memories of past sufferings—that whipped the organism to go on into keener living. He was sexed, he was hungry, he was vicious, he slept and ate, he bred consciously, carrying on the eager shout within his being for more, more of life. More of existence aware of itself!
"If he killed, he gloried in the hot blood that drenched his hairless nose, and he learned to laugh through the pleasure of a filled belly. He learned to cry when he went hungry. Tears came, and emotions, a more specialized instinct.
"He was learning something else, too. But pain still whipped him on, filled him with fear of non-life, and he grew cowardly. Nature had created a new thing, a brain, a specialized mass of cells that can comment, realize, criticise, warn, appreciate, choose better food, get it easier, help to conquer and promote life; the biped used this new thing to understand why he ran from the fingers that clutched at him in the dark and he became afraid. If it brought him new pain, it also brought him new pleasure. It was a great toy that could be used to enjoy oneself with.
"It can have the joy of bodily sensations and then recall them, study them, comment on them, on its own instincts, its own memories. It can dream of ways for procuring fuller life, and put the dreams into any desired shape. Man struts from his jungle, laughing aloud, with lust for life and joy at his fulness thereof. But all the while, pain, the darkness, the still inert unconsciousness in existence that oppresses and drags back into its own dead inertness, is laughing still more heartily.
"Everywhere it checks, but man in his egotism forgets that he is a slave, bound and hampered, and boasts himself master. Death sweeps in, lightning kills, thunder crashes over him, and filled with fear, with something bigger than he can grasp, he falls upon his knees, and cries, 'God!'
"Then begins the mess, the tangled, detestable, bloody, dirty, riotously glorious, sublime mystery that is me. Me and you, Claire. Here we are."
Claire leaned over him, her breath suspended in her eagerness.
"Me, the man, specialized, sex-specialized, made to record, to enjoy, to remember, to create, and to die at last from sheer wearing out myself seeking life.
"And you, you the woman, deeper, more vitally sexed, more complete in your memory of the past, more true in your record of it, less a sport, more a true seeker and knower of life—you, the embodiment of it all, memory, instinct, fear, passion, tenderness, hate—cunning, strong, wise, far-seeing, and altogether mistress of the whole brute world, mistress of everything in life and destiny save death. You, too, worn out by struggling to live more fully, but not until your lust for life has sent children out to carry on the struggle.
"Oh, Claire, it is you the woman, demanding at any cost that your child live, who gives us our great knowledge, our beauty, our selfishness, and our strident sex, our pain."
Claire caught her breath and sobbed: "Lawrence, Lawrence!"
"Yes," he went on, "that is the end of it all. I see it now. You, unknown to yourself, demanding your child, stung to fear of death without it here in the wilderness, you love me—I know it, you love me. And I—I love you. It was that which droveyou to speak as you did. I see. I love you!"
She sank down on the pillow beside him. In her heart was a great relief which carried her away in a flood of tears. Lawrence talked on unheeded by her. He had made everything clear, and she was utterly happy.
When Philip came in he found her sitting quietly, in her eyes a deep, calm peace that filled him with wonder.
He smiled at her, thoughtfully, and remarked: "Well, Claire, you look happier than you have for months."
"I am," she said simply.
They did not carry on the conversation. He was satisfied that it was love for him which made her so distant, and he was content to wait until she should be his wife. He sat by the fire, watching her earnestly, and she was too deep in her new-found joy even to think of him or of her promise to him.
TO BE CONCLUDED NEXT WEEK.Don't forget this magazine is issued weekly, and that you will get the continuation of this story without waiting a month.
This story began in the All-Story Weekly for October 5.
It was well into April before Lawrence was able to walk again. His convalescence had been slow, and he was still very weak. They had planned to start out by the end of April, but they were compelled to postpone the journey until the middle of May. Philip was fired with impatience. He wanted to get out to a priest and be married to Claire. She, on her part, was glad of the delay. She dreaded the hour when she should have to tell Philip that she would not marry him. Her joy in her love for Lawrence was too great, however, to allow for much thought about the matter.
She looked back upon her yielding to Philip as upon a terrible nightmare, but she still liked him and could not bring herself to limit the intimate ways which had sprung up between them. He did not imagine, therefore, that there had been any change in her.
Claire had never told Lawrence of what he had said during his illness, but her treatment of him was very different from what it had been before. He had come out of his illness with a calm assurance of his future, and he knew that he loved Claire. He did not know her feeling, but as soon as he should be well he meant to tell her of his love once more.
The days passed in quiet serenity. Outside the cabin the plateau flowed under the pines into green and white and gold with dark patches of blue flowers that filled Claire's heart with song. The lake was open and glistened in the warm sun, while fish leaped in it, sending up sparkling rainbow drops. Claire took to wandering along the shore with Lawrence or Philip, or both, talking gaily all the while. She never mentioned her husband, it was only of their return to civilization that she spoke and of the great time the three of them would have in celebration. They laughed agreement with her words.
As Lawrence grew more and more like himself there came a time, however, when Philip could not but see that Claire was giving the artist a tenderness, a sweetness of companionship, and a carefully guarded joy which he had never known. It was impossible for him to say to himself longer that it was only her nursing manner.
He took to watching her eyes, and again and again he caught them filled with a deep light which they had never held for him. He now realized that he had always feared Claire might love Lawrence, that he had feared it even on the day of her confession. A fierce desire of possession gripped him, and he swore to have this woman as his wife, in spite of Lawrence, in spite of herself, if need be. It was this last frame of mind which gained in constancy until he became a danger to Claire's happiness.
She saw it in his dark expression, and her heart cried out against herself for the time of weakness. Then a great doubt would assail her. Lawrence had never spoken of love since he had regained his consciousness, and she wondered if, after all, his talk had been mere delirium, without basis in hisnormal mind. She determined to find out, and then tell Philip the frank truth. She was sure that he would receive it as a gentleman should, and let her moment of weakness pass forgiven. She went over all their experience together, and she came to feel that, in any case, she could never live with him. Even though Lawrence did not care, she told herself, she could go out into the world and find her place.
One evening she came into the house and found Philip alone, sitting darkly over his book. She felt sorry for him, and, wanting to leave him friendly memories, if she could, she walked quietly over to him and laid her hand on his shoulder.
He looked up and smiled faintly, though his face remained clouded.
"Philip," she said, "you look worried!"
"I dare say I do," he returned quietly, but there came into his eyes a fierce light that frightened her.
"Why should you?" she asked.
"Claire!" He stood up and faced her. "I do not know what you think of Lawrence. I do not know what he thinks of you. I do not care. I will tell you one thing. You lay in my arms yonder and said that you would be my wife. If you did not mean it"—he hesitated—"then you are scarcely the type of woman to be allowed to live. Don't lead me to suspect that such is the case."
Claire gasped, realized her situation, and for the moment was carried beyond all power of speech. She sank in a chair and stared at him. Then, suppressing her rising fear, she said calmly: "Philip, would you have me yours against your will?"
His eyes flashed fire at her.
"Would you say you wanted to be mine and not mean it?"
"No," she faltered, "I—I might have meant it then."
"Does your heart change with the passing breeze?"
She was feeling panicky. Her throat was dry and hot.
"I hope not," she said faintly.
"Bah! Does it?" he demanded.
"No," she said, even more faintly.
"Very well. You lay in my arms there and told me you would be my wife. Years ago, before you came into my life, another woman played with me. You shall not. I do not know what has happened to bring about the change in you. It cannot alter my will. You are mine by your own lips. It is best for us both that I hold you to your promise. When we go out of this place to a priest you shall become my wife. You dare not be untrue to yourself!"
She was afraid to answer him. His dark, threatening face told her that he was beyond reason, and she sank wearily back in her chair. In her heart she was determined never to be his, but her lips played her false. Despite her will they whispered submissively, "Very well, Philip. I understand."
He laughed aloud. "What in Heaven's name made you act like that, Claire?" he asked, once more kindly and agreeable.
"A woman's whim!" she said, and hated herself for saying it.
"I don't understand women," he laughed softly.
"Neither do I." It was Lawrence's voice. He had come in, just in time to hear the last words. "Nor men, either—except in one thing."
"What is the one thing?" asked Claire eagerly.
"That, given a normal, healthy mind, they will sacrifice all their idols for life. Life is the one eternally insistent thing."
Philip chuckled. "You are yourself again, I see."
"Yes, and stronger than ever in my faith," said Lawrence, sitting down. "I know the price I would pay for life. It is the price every human being would pay, if demanded."
"What is that price?" Philip asked.
"The whole of one's faith in God and man!"
"Nonsense!" Philip spoke curtly. "I would die before forfeiting a dozen ideals I hold dear!"
"Would you?" Lawrence looked at him quizzically. "Would you sacrifice your own life before you would the love of your sweetheart, for instance, if you had one?"
The conversation was similar to those which they had had months before, but the fire was nearer the surface now.
"Yes." Philip's answer came swiftly.
"Then you are a sex-maddened mountaineer!"
"And you are talking like the beast you are not. I know you do not believe that."
"I know I do. I would only die for a woman if she were my life."
"But any real love finds her so."
"Folly! I find my work, my future, my dream of a single immortal statue more my life than any woman!" Lawrence exclaimed.
"I wonder if you really do," Claire mused, half to herself.
"Yes," Lawrence insisted, "although she might be necessary to that statue. At least I believe she might—and I would feel sure of it if I wanted her badly enough," he ended amusedly.
"That merely means that you are still utterly selfish!" said Claire.
"Yes, I am." Lawrence was thoughtful. "It is a paradox, I am so selfish that, although I would sacrifice myself to the last degree for a person I loved, yet I would all the time feel that I was a fool, that I was doing an absurd thing when life was so good."
"I see," Claire observed. "And I know I would do the same."
"I would do it," Philip said, "but I would not feel a fool. It would seem to me right."
Claire looked straight into his eyes. "You would not, Philip," she declared softly. "Your own happiness would come first—and you know it."
The Spaniard's gaze shifted, and there was silence in the cabin. When he looked up his eyes had changed their expression.
"Yes," he agreed steadily, "I admit it. Hereafter I mean to have what I want from life at any cost."
"Yet you will go on talking ideals," Lawrence mocked.
"Yes—and thinking them, too."
"While Lawrence will make the sacrifice and go on talking his selfishness," Claire added.
Both men laughed constrainedly.
"And I," Claire continued, "if it is necessary, will lie to preserve my will, and, having it secure, will use it to obtain what I want."
"We are at last three delightfully frank, insufferable, unpleasant, and very natural, likable human beings!" Lawrence laughed.
"And on that basis we will work out our fates," murmured Claire.
"We will do just that," Lawrence answered gaily.
"Be they good or bad, we will meet our futures with perfect self-knowledge," contributed Philip.
"Then most likely they will be bad," Claire added with conviction.
They gave up talking, and each abandoned himself to his own reflections. In the minds of the two men these thoughts assumed widely differing words, though they were the same thoughts.
Philip was garbing his impulses, desires, and determinations in clothes that furnished his habitual mental wardrobe. With their marriage, he thought, Claire would learn the real Philip. He would treat her with such deference, such tender respect, and such devotion that she would see the wisdom of her choice. He would prove to her that sex mattered little, was altogether secondary. It was her great companionship, her dear thoughtfulness, her charming personality that he loved. Respect, first of all: happy married life depended on respect; then, common interest, friendship between two human beings, and, last and least important, that wonderful emotion springing out of the divine God-given reproductive life of both.
Lawrence was thinking very different words to the same end. He thought of her as his mate, his comrade, and his equal. He admired her brain, smiled at the thought of their hours of intellectual pleasure, dreamed of her as the stimulus to creation which her mind should help shape into master work.
He loved her beauty and her measureless well of bubbling energy. What a help she could be to him! She was the greatest of all women; he wanted her, needed her. Could he realize his dream? That was the point. Well, no matter, or, at least, no use in speculating. He would try. If she were willing, what a life of joy and accomplishment lay before them! If not, he had lived alone until this time, and he could continueto live alone. Meantime, was Philip the barrier that would keep him from her? He hoped not. He did not believe that she loved Philip. If she did, he would be a good loser and wish her joy. His heart ached at the thought. But, after all, one doesn't die over such things, and he would recover.
"I'm going to get the supper," said Claire somewhat abruptly. She rose and set to work.
Here the thoughts of the two men flowed into an identical channel. It was certainly good to sit and listen to her. That sound would be very agreeable, indeed, at the end of a day, in one's own home. As for her husband, he was out of the question. If Claire went back to him, she might find him married or in love again, unwilling to receive her after her long months with two men in the wilderness, suspicious of such a thing being possible without more intimacies than he would care to overlook. No, her husband did not matter. She would be justified and safe in remarrying. Of course, not safe if she returned to America, but that she would not do.
At this point their thoughts diverged. Philip was seeing Claire as the continued inmate of his cabin. Lawrence was painting a delightful mental picture of Claire as the ever-present fairy of his studio in some South American town, or perhaps in Paris. He preferred France; it was a land of more brilliance, more freedom, and certainly much more appreciation of the things in which they were interested. Besides, his work would carry more prestige in the world if it came from Europe.
He thanked the memory of old Roger Burton, of Cripple Creek, and he rejoiced that he would be able to give Claire the home to which she was entitled. He smiled as his thoughts went back to the mines and the dirty little newsboy an old man had befriended. Burton's quarter to Red had kept Lawrence, the boy, from becoming a coward, and Burton's slender provision for the college graduate would now insure happiness for Lawrence the man. Many times before he had laughed scornfully at the untouched interest from the miner's bonds. He could make his own living. But now there would be Claire. The old man would have been glad to see his protégé happy in the love of such a woman.
Meanwhile Claire was doing her work automatically. In her mind there was pleasure at the thought that Lawrence was listening to her movements. But she was filled with a dead weight that seemed likely to break her down with its dreadful pressure. Vaguely she wished that she had never seen Philip, even that she had never seen Lawrence, or that she had perished with him in the mountains.
How had she ever placed herself in the position she was now in? She had come by the way of a terrible road and, looking ahead, she could see nothing but sadness, anguish, and a life of dull discontent with Philip—that or death!
Lawrence had had time and opportunity since his recovery to declare himself, and he had not done so. She had had time and opportunity to tell him frankly of her own feeling, but she had not done so. She did not know why. Now she could not. Philip had given her to understand his desperate determination to marry her, and, after all she had said and done, she had no right to refuse him. If she told him the truth he might kill Lawrence or her, or both of them. These tragic idealists, she exclaimed to herself, what a tangle they can make out of life!
Oh, what a noose she had managed to fasten around her own neck! Would the problem never be settled, one way or the other?
What would she do if Philip tried to force her to marry him? Kill him? Was she, then, so primitive, so savage, so much the slave of her own desires that she would slay to gain her end? She remembered Lawrence's talk when he was ill, "We killed those days, Claire, killed because we wanted fuller life, fuller knowledge, fuller expansion of our own vital existence; we were gropers after more light!"
"Supper!" she said dully, and then sat down.
They ate in silence save for the occasional necessary word, and afterward went immediately to bed.
Claire soon fell asleep, with the lastthought in her mind—to live as she wanted to live she would pay any price!
It was the 1st of May when Lawrence at last found himself alone with Claire and decided to speak. The instant he thought of declaring himself he was surprised at his own mental state. A panic seized him, his heart beat unsteadily, his mouth grew dry, and he could think of nothing to say.
They were out on the lake shore. Philip had left them on his last long trip across the plateau before starting for civilization. The warm spring wind blew around them, laden with scent of pine and flower. At their feet the water rippled and cooed little melodies. Claire sat very still, gazing wistfully at the man beside her. Her heart was a lead weight, and her brain ached with the strain of her problem.
It was late afternoon. All day she had wandered with Lawrence in comparative silence, wishing that he would speak, and observing that something troubled him.
Finally she moved uneasily, took her hand from her cheek, and said half-dreamily, "You aren't a bit talkative."
He gulped, swallowed, and laughed. "I'm too busy trying to think of something to say," he told her amusedly.
"Oh!" She was provoked in the extreme. "Have I ceased to suggest conversation? You are very tired of me, then."
"Quite the contrary. So far from it, you paralyze my tongue."
"How complimentary!" she said. "Then I suppose your excessive arguments with Philip denote your weariness of him?"
"They do."
"I suppose, if you were really fond of a person, you would never talk at all?"
"Perhaps. I don't know but that you are right."
She laughed gaily. "Lawrence," she said, "you are certainly amusing when you attempt to be flattering!"
He grew warm and uncomfortable.
"I wasn't trying to flatter. Can't you see that?" He was almost wistful.
"I don't see it. No, if you weren't trying to flatter you were surely doing the unintended in a most intricately original manner."
He shifted his position and did not answer.
"Of course," she said, "although you aren't accustomed to flattering, you've taken to doing it almost constantly."
"Well, why shouldn't I?" he asked curiously.
"Why not, if you care to?" Her reply was as gentle as if she were a submissive object of his whims.
He felt that now was the time to speak, but he could not bring himself to the point. The thought of his blindness killed all confidence.
"Hang it all," he broke out, quite as if it were a part of their previous talk, "blindness certainly does rob one of his will!"
She looked at him apprehensively. "I thought you had decided you were the master of that."
"I had, but it seems I was mistaken."
Claire laid her hand on his arm tenderly. Her eyes were dazzling.
"Lawrence, you must master that, you know."
"Why?" he said thoughtfully. "If I shouldn't, it would mean only one more human animal on the scrap heap!"
"But you don't want to be there."
"Of course not. No one does. I don't imagine any one chooses it."
"If you go there it will be because you choose it."
"I wish I saw things your way," he observed. "At times I feel as sure of success as if it were inevitable, and then suddenly down sweeps the black uncertainty, and I am afraid, timid, and unnerved."
She looked at him sadly.
"Don't you believe in your work, Lawrence?"
"Yes, that is about all I do believe in."
"Then what is the matter?"
"It is that, after all, thousands of men have believed in their work to no avail. One can never know whether he is a fad or a real artist. It isn't only that, either.One's work, when it is his life, requires so much besides to make it possible. It is that which gives me the blue fear you see. I always imagine that the thing I want just then is absolutely essential to my better work. Perhaps it is. I don't know. I know only that I am persuaded that it is. Then I set about to get that thing and I fail."
"But do you always fail?" Claire was unconsciously pleading her own cause.
"Not always. Just often enough to scare me to death when the biggest need of my life seems just out of reach."
"Nonsense, Lawrence," she laughed. "When you were sick you talked as if you could reach out and pull down the stars, if you needed them in an endeavor to complete your life."
"Sometimes I think I could, then the reality of life comes crashing through the walls of my dream-palace, and, behold, I am standing desolate and abandoned, grasping at lights which are even too far away to be seen! I am clawing darkness for something I fancied I could reach, while, as far as I am concerned, it is clear out of space and time."
She sat pensively looking across the lake.
"Yet you keep on reaching, don't you?"
"Yes—and no. I always wish I could. There are times, Claire, when I don't want to be a realist, don't want to face life as it is, when it seems too tawdry to be valuable just as it is; then I reach out into the night and cry, 'Let me be the maddest of dreamers, the wildest of idealists, a knight of fancy seeking the illusive dream!'"
Claire laughed aloud as she said, "And don't you know, dear man, that that is just what you do become at times?"
"I know it. That's the joke of it. All the while I mock myself for being a romancing idiot!"
"What a state of mind!" she exclaimed.
"It isn't pleasant. Then, worse than that, when I attain my star, I spoil it with too much scrutiny."
She started. "What do you mean?"
"Just that. I make a mess of it."
"Still I don't understand."
He thought for a moment, then said sadly: "Take the cherub I carved there"—he nodded in the direction of the house—"I was wild with creative fervor when I did that. I put into it a thousand little thoughts that flashed with imaginative fire. I dreamed things, felt things that should have made a masterpiece beyond all masterpieces, and at last the thing was finished. Still under the heat of enthusiasm, I felt of it, tested it, and found it good. Well, a week later, when the imaginative flame was gone, I went back and looked at it again. It was poor, cold, imperfect, not at all what it should have been. I dreamed a star and made a block of poor wooden imagery."
"But you underestimate your work. To me the cherub is still a star."
He laughed. "It is what others see of good in my work that makes me hope that sooner or later I will do the thing that will stand eternally a star of the first magnitude."
"And you will, Lawrence," she said earnestly.
"Perhaps." He was pensive. "Perhaps not. That is where the rest of life enters in. I want many things; they seem necessary if I am to attain my eternal star. I am afraid I shall never get them!"
"Have you tried?"
"No, I haven't the courage. If they should be beyond my grasp, if obtaining them, they should prove to be wrong and not the real things I need, after all, what then?"
"I don't know." She waited to watch a little colored cloud float by, and then continued: "Isn't the real interest in life the game you play?"
"I suppose it is, but it's hard on other people."
"Why—and how?"
"Suppose," Lawrence said slowly, "you were the one thing I thought I needed."
Claire leaned toward him, her lips apart, her heart beating wildly.
"Suppose I were sure of it, and set about to make you part of my life, well, if I succeeded and then"—he smiled sadly—"found that you were not the necessity, not the answer to my need, what of you? It would be an inferno for you, and nonethe less equally terrible for me! We couldn't help it. Under such circumstances you would be right in saying that I had been unfair. I don't know, certainly you would be right in charging your possible unhappiness to me."
"Under your supposition, Lawrence," she answered evenly, "if you obtained my love, wouldn't it then be my game, my risk in the great gamble for deeper life? Wouldn't it be my mistake for having thought you were what I needed?"
"What if you still thought you needed me after I was sure that I did not need you?"
She shrugged her shoulders. "I am too fond of life and too eager to know its possibilities to let that hurt me long. Possibly I should weep, be cynical, maybe even do something desperate, but at last I would come up smiling, calm in the faith that my life was deeper, richer for the experience, and that yours was, too. Or if it proved that yours was not, I should be amused at the shallowness of the Claire that was, for having been so simple a dunce as to imagine that you were worth while. I should thank you for teaching the present Claire to forsake that shallow one, and should find you a rung on my ladder of life!"
He laughed merrily. "You are strong in your faith, Claire."
"Yes. This winter and you have made me strong," she answered.
"I have made you strong in it?"
"Yes. Last summer, when you dragged me out of the surf, I was full of a number of ideas I no longer possess."
"But what have I done?"
"You have lived stridently all your life."
"Perhaps so. What of it?"
"I see that is the thing most worth doing."
"What will your husband say to such a doctrine?"
"I don't know. I am not going back to him. We are not the same people we were a year ago, and he would no more love the present Claire than I should love the present Howard."
The sky deepened from pink to crimson, but Claire's eyes were staring blankly on the ground.
"Claire, what do you think is essential to great work?"
"I don't know. To keep at it most likely." She was digging with a little stick in the grass.
"Perhaps you're right," he agreed. "But sometimes I think it is a lot of other things; romantic wandering over the earth, a deep and lasting love, any number of such external factors."
"You don't call love external, do you?"
"I mean a permanent love," he laughed.
"Oh, well, perhaps those are necessary, certainly they would be a help to you, they would be to any one. But, after all, even a woman isn't absolutely essential to a man in order that he create great art."
"I think she is," Lawrence insisted.
"Very well, perhaps she is, but"—Claire laughed skeptically—"I know that she is not the all in all, the alpha and omega, the 'that without which nothing,' that she is so often told she is by seeking males."
"No," he agreed slowly, "in rare cases of great love that may be true, but in most cases it isn't."
"It is more likely that what you, the abstract male, really mean is that you must have some woman as wife and housekeeper."
"Perhaps that is so, although even that needs qualifying."
"I know," she said, "but why not be frank about it both ways; that is precisely her situation as well as his. There ought to be less sentimental rubbish and more plain sense about all of it. Women would suffer less from shattered illusions, they would grow accustomed to reality, and be considerably less idiotic in their romantic caperings."
"I admit it," Lawrence said, smiling; "and yet"—he paused—"I want to be the maddest of romanticists, I want to say those things to the woman I love, I want to think them about her, I want to feel them all, all those dear, false romantic deceptions. I do, in fact, even though my brain agrees with you."
"So should I, and I would." Then she added softly under her breath, "I do."
Lawrence turned a little toward her, his fingers gripping the grass in front of him.
"Claire," he said slowly, "I—I want to say them, think them, believe them about and with you."
She did not move. Over her there swept a great joy, and her thinking stopped. She was feeling all the dear things she had just condemned, and she looked at her lover. He was blind. He could not see what was in her face, and he was not sure that he interpreted her silence correctly. He was waiting, anguishing, for her answer. She realized then what it was he needed more than he himself knew.
"Lawrence," she cried joyfully, slipping into his arms, "I know what you need, beloved!"
He laughed exultantly as he showered kisses upon her eagerly upturned face.
"I guess you do, sweetheart," he consented. "What is it?"
She settled down with a sigh of content, her head against his shoulder, and announced, very much like a child saying what it knows to be wisely true: "You need a woman who is keen enough to think with you and be eyes for you, natural and unspoiled by conventional sham enough to be your heart's answer, self-willed enough to be herself and deny you and your selfishness, and, above all, mother enough to care for you as she would a child. I believe I am that woman, dearest boy!"
He held her tight in his arms and smiled.
"I not only think, I know you are."
For a long time they sat in silence, dreaming, loving, enjoying, and caring nothing for all the rest of the world. At last Claire raised her head from his shoulder and whispered, "Lawrence, before I would be separated from you, I am afraid I would kill!"
He chuckled merrily. "Good!" he said. "That sounds proper. So would I. We are alive because our ancestors killed to live, they fought to mate, so shall we, if need be."
She remembered Philip and shuddered slightly.
"What is the matter, Claire?" Lawrence drew her closer.
She did not answer. She was wondering how to tell him about Philip, and afraid.
"Are you filled with terror at the mere thought of murder!" he asked.
She moved uneasily in his arms. "No, but I can't say I like to even think of such a possibility."
"Don't, then. It isn't very likely to happen," he comforted.
She remained silent, but her pleasure was not untroubled. Her whole impulse was to wait, but her brain kept demanding that she tell him now, and she gathered herself for the effort.
"Lawrence"—she hesitated—"I—I have something I must tell you."
"All right. Go ahead; but confessions never do much good."
She drew away from him tenderly.
"Because my whole being wants to be in your arms, I will not—not while I tell you," she said, sitting beside him. "I want you to hear and think without my body in your arms as a determining factor in your answer."
"Very well. Go ahead. I promise to be an emotionless judge."
"Can you?" she asked quickly.
"No," he said, "but I will."
They both laughed, and she nerved herself to talk.
"It's about Philip," she said timidly.
He started.
"Don't tell me about him, Claire," he said. "It can't do any good, and it's hard for you, I see. Whatever you are or were to Philip doesn't matter to me in the least. The Claire of this morning wasn't my mate. It is only Claire from now on that counts, and she is not in any way bound to Philip for whatever may have occurred in the past."
"Oh, I wish that were true!" she moaned.
"It is true," he asserted.
"But you don't understand. Let me go on, please."
"Surely," he answered. "Say as much or as little as you wish."
She told him then, falteringly, sometimes wondering at his calm, expressionless face as she talked. She was filled with dread, for he sat as still as death, without a word, without a change of expression to show her what he was thinking. She made many corrections to her explanation, and suppliedbits of comment in an effort to discover herself how it all had happened. There was nothing of apology in her attitude, however, and she finally concluded with an account of that afternoon in her bedroom, and what she had said to Philip since that day.
"Now," she said at last, "you know all about it. You can do as you please, of course. If you choose to go on, we will have to find some solution together. Philip will not take it easily. Of that I am sure. He is more than likely to become desperate."
She waited. Lawrence did not move. His face was seriously thoughtful, and she was filled with a growing fear that made it harder and harder to wait for him to speak.
When she could stand it no longer, she shook his arm.
"Lawrence, why don't you say something?" she cried.
He read the fear in her voice, and laughed caressingly, as he took her in his arms.
"I thought you knew it wouldn't alter our futures," he said. "I was only trying to think out a just solution unpersuaded by your body in my arms."
"Oh!" She laughed comfortably. He was making fun of her, and she was not averse to it.
"It certainly looks as if Philip were up against a bad future," he went on, amusedly.
"Philip!" she cried, startled. "Are you pitying him all this time?"
"Whom else?" Lawrence demanded. "We don't need pity, do we?"
"Oh, you selfish lover!" she chided. "I have been needing and do need it. Philip worries me."
"I see," he mused. "Well, accept my condolences, and prepare to pass them on to Philip. Poor devil! When you and I are back in our world, he will indeed need pity."
"Suppose he takes steps to see that I don't go back?" she chanced.
"He can scarcely compel you to live with him."
"He can, and he will. He isn't as civilized as he appears. If need be, he would keep me locked up here and make me his by force, or kill me. He told me so."
Lawrence shrugged his shoulders.
"Romantic raving for effect!" he exclaimed. "But if he should happen to try that, well, I think my argument might be as effective as his."
"But how do you propose to stop him? I tell you, he is in earnest." Claire was insistent.
"Why, in whatever way is necessary. If it is my life against his, I'll give him the best I've got."
She looked at Lawrence in wonder. He was as calm as if he had been making small talk at a theater-party.
"Can you plan it so—so carelessly, like that?" she asked.
"Why not? I could hardly allow him to take you by force. I wouldn't choose a fight as a diversion, but once in, I wouldn't stop short of his life. And I wouldn't feel any compunction afterward, either."
"Well," she said quickly, "it won't be necessary."
"I think not." He smiled. "We need say nothing about our plans. Once we get into town, all the world is ours, and we can quietly depart, leaving Philip Ortez a very pleasant memory."
They both laughed heartily.
Neither of them allowed for that vast portion of human character which lies beyond the knowledge of the most keen-visioned. Claire was more familiar with the distinctly male phases of Philip than Lawrence—perhaps a woman always is—but they were too happy to give the matter any real consideration, and, after the fashion of all lovers, they shut out the third person from their little self-bound universe.